Chapter 401

Chou Jiu fights the yellow light with everything his mind can bring to bear. Fang Yuan is young, his soul foundation thinner than this hundred-year-old monster’s, and enslaving him outright was never going to be easy. So Fang Yuan beats him instead, raining blows with his own strength path Gu while Chou Jiu, unable to use any worm of his own, is simply outmatched in raw force. Bruised and reeling, his focus split by the pain, Chou Jiu lets the yellow light sink deeper even as he curls up and endures it, terrified of what happens once it finishes fusing, until only a sliver remains unsealed near his forehead. ^{ch. 401}

Fang Yuan laughs coldly and lands the real blow: he calls him Zeng Ah Niu, and tells him that Chen Jiu betrayed him and is living well with Shang Yan Fei. The shock of being known this intimately is enough; the last of the light rushes in, and Chou Jiu’s manner flips in an instant as he kneels and greets him as master. Success. ^{ch. 401}

A rank five slavery Gu shows its true worth on a rank five target. By now, Tie Mu Bai, Wu Gui, Ku Mo and Wu Lan Shan are already dead at Fang Yuan’s hands, while Mo Wu Tian and Xiao Mang have not yet arrived; the last two names on his list were Wang Xiao, lord of Wu mountain, and killer ghost doctor Chou Jiu. ^{ch. 401}

Wu mountain cannot compare to the Door of Life and Death, a forbidden ground on the same level as the river of time, and enslaving Chou Jiu hands Fang Yuan a lead on it. Chou Jiu is also one of the four great doctors of southern border with reach even into the righteous path, making him a far better asset than Mo Wu Tian would have been. The one real cost is the heavy burden enslaving him places on Fang Yuan’s soul, a complication for the Immortal Gu refinement still ahead. ^{ch. 401}

Fang Yuan asks whether Chou Jiu once bound a poison vow Gu with Doctor Su Shou, swearing eternal, unbreakable devotion. Confused how he could know, Chou Jiu confirms it, though he names her as Chen Jiu, his senior sister: poison vow Gu, he explains, is mountain pledge sea oath Gu’s replacement, one Chen Jiu had no way to simply negate, so she risked her life for that gigolo Shang Yan Fei instead, letting the poison vow kill her rather than obey it, then used her own healing skill to resurrect herself and walk free. ^{ch. 401}

Fang Yuan grows even angrier than Chou Jiu himself, kicking him and spitting that he is a lying piece of filth. He remembers how vaguely Chou Jiu had once described it, only as an oath sworn before the blessed land’s sea to protect and stand by each other, never once naming the poison vow Gu itself; had he known that detail back then, he tells himself, he would have realized someone in Shang clan city could break such a vow, and been wary of Bai Ning Bing sooner. He recalls, too, a dismissive remark Chou Jiu once made about Shang Yan Fei’s looks that, in hindsight, should have tipped him off that something was being hidden. He looks at Chou Jiu with open contempt: claiming love while binding a woman with a poison vow shows exactly how sinister and inferior the man’s heart really is. It also settles an old suspicion for him: it was Doctor Su Shou who had helped Bai Ning Bing break free of her own poison vow. ^{ch. 401}

Setting the past aside, Fang Yuan sends Chou Jiu to King Xin Inheritance to bring back the undefeated hundred battles Gu, an easy task now that the weakening blessed land will soon let him push straight through. ^{ch. 401}

His killing done for now, Fang Yuan returns to refining Gu in the hall. Rebirth has bought him time: instead of forcing himself through on an hour of sleep a night like before, he can now rest six hours and refine slowly, in careful sequence, wasting little immortal essence thanks to experience and impressing the land spirit with how cleanly each step goes. ^{ch. 401}

Days pass and the blessed land weakens further as Che clan and Zuo clan move in and Xiao Mang and Mo Wu Tian both arrive on San Cha mountain, until October 24th comes around again. Chou Jiu returns kneeling, holding out a plain grey stone disc, the undefeated hundred battles Gu. In the previous life, Feng Tian Yu’s success at King Xin Inheritance brought several hundred hairy men back with him; Chou Jiu, no refinement master, had to force his way through instead and comes back with the Gu alone, not one follower behind him. Fang Yuan does not mind, since the hairy men were only ever suited to refining Gu, not fighting. He sends Chou Jiu off again in secret, keeping the whole exchange from Bai Ning Bing. ^{ch. 401}

Back at the bronze hall, Bai Ning Bing has already arrived with a hundred thousand dog beasts resting and playing behind her. Fang Yuan tells her to hand her Gu worms to the land spirit instead, since its manipulation is better than hers. Ba Gui, worried that splitting its attention between the dogs and the refinement will leave it short, only agrees once Fang Yuan assures it that he has his own pawns among the enemy and primeval stones enough to spare. ^{ch. 401}

He asks Bai Ning Bing to stay and guard him while he refines, calling her someone he trusts, and pats her shoulder with a kind, affectionate smile. She answers flatly that she does not care whether the refinement succeeds, only that he not die. ^{ch. 401}

Inside the hall, Fang Yuan sits and does nothing for a long stretch. Bai Ning Bing eventually breaks the silence to ask what he is waiting for, and he tells her some things cannot be rushed. She says nothing more, but privately wonders whether he suspects her, then reasons that placing her here at his side means he still trusts her, and reminds herself that even without her help outside, Tie Ruo Nan is boxed in by the dog groups while Tie Bai Qi waits hidden on San Cha mountain as their own backup plan. ^{ch. 401}

Even the land spirit grows anxious and urges him to begin, its tone edging toward anger, but Fang Yuan puts it off again, calming it only by invoking his identity as its future master. ^{ch. 401}

On the mountain peak outside, King Quan Inheritance’s yellow pillar has vanished, leaving only a thin blue and a thin red light still burning, two pillars where only the red one had survived last time, since Chou Jiu could not clear the final round the way the refinement master Feng Tian Yu once had. The onlooking crowd wonders aloud who took King Quan Inheritance and why none of its rank five Gu Masters have emerged, until a voice answers that they are being held inside a blessed land now heading for destruction, whose door will soon open to let everyone in and out freely, and the crowd recognizes it as Xiao Mang’s. ^{ch. 401}